I’ve spent some time exploring the feasibility of maybe making a game. Because of my constant issues with my wrist and shoulder I thought it might be easier for me to tell the story I want to tell in this format.

However, as with everything I can already feel that I’m getting carried away once again, and in the end it would end up even more difficult. (Though still easier on my wrist.)

It would also be easier to collaborate on a game than it would be on a comic imo.

I started experimenting with the Godot engine and I can already say that I like it more than Gamemaker or Unity etc. It had proper 2D isometric support right out of the box which is my favorite 2D projection. (Though Unity recently surpassed Godot with it’s own 2D isometric tilemaps with height support for individual tiles.)2D on the whole doesn’t feel like an afterthought in Godot like it does in Unity.

Then I experimented a bit with lighting and thought: “What if I made a 2D pixel art game with realistic lighting?” Now this is where the whole thing goes off the rails. Basically, to get realistic lighting with proper shadows you need 3D information and so I ended up looking at the 3D part of the Godot engine. Turns out pixel art is actually harder this way than more high res art would be, because ensuring one pixel equals one pixel with all that floating point math can get tricky. Especially with an isometric projection.

I made a cow which is casting a realistic shadow, but so far nothing special. A 2D sprite can cast such a shadow, as long as it is lit from the front.

However, here’s the cow being lit from the side and still casting a realistic shadow.

Looking good so far, but I achieved this by putting an invisible 3D mesh behind the sprite, if lit from different angles it would often cast shadows on the sprite itself, ruining the illusion. Then I tried putting it in the same spot as the sprite, this time with front face culling enabled, but since the mesh is not fully convex it creates a lot of artifacts.

This is how it looks in the editor. The Mesh was quickly made with blender.

I’m not very good at programming but the ultimate solution is probably to generate these meshes automatically from depth maps, then project the sprites and normals onto them with a shader, using world space, or screen space (not sure which) instead of tangent space. But I don’t know shaders at all so…

As you can see, my perfectionism is getting the better of me yet again. A regular old 2D game with less complex lighting would probably be good enough.

But it’s hard for me to resist this temptation, of trying to make things look even better.And this is an issue I’m also facing with my comics.

A few months ago I talked about how I was in a mental hospital for a while and that right after I got out there was a fire in the House I lived in.

Now, I’m still dealing with the insurance to be able to replace my stuff, but some nice readers stepped up and donated money. Thanks to this, I was able to get the essentials already, like a new bed and some clothes. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to afford anything, because right before all this happened, I spent all of my savings to purchase a Dell Canvas pen display. I didn’t even get to really use it yet with all that’s been going on. Luckily it did survive the fire, because it has no vents for cooling or anything, so none of that corrosive smoke was able to get into it. Good thing I didn’t get that Wacom with it’s vents and cooling fan eh?

A lot of you sent me nice messages, donations, and someone sent me some of his old computer parts to get me back up and running. Some people also offered to help with the comic in a collaborative manner.

I haven’t responded to almost any of you and I’m sorry.

I guess you guys can tell by now that I got some mental problems. Dealing with other people in any way is difficult for me. For example: I spent more than two months drafting up just the one letter to the insurance company, most of that time I was sitting there panicking about nothing. Ideally I’d just live in the woods all by myself somewhere, because I’m really starting to realize that I’m not made for living in a society… but that’s not very realistic. So, when I don’t respond to your messages, this is why. It’s not that I haven’t read them, it’s that communicating with people is just super stressful for me.

Anyway, I’ll probably be able to move into my apartment again in a few weeks, there’s still some gaping holes there from the removal of burnt pipes and insulation that need to be filled in, but other than that it’s just about moving stuff back in and refurnishing.

After that I’ll be able to tell you what I have in mind for continuing AHS.

If you look at my patreon earnings per page it looks pretty nice right? But if you think about it it’s actually insane.

I can’t update AHS a lot and I’m pretty sure the majority of readers abandon my comic because of it… but despite this, I still got a good number of patrons.

Now imagine how many patrons I’d have if I wasn’t a complete wreck?

This should be motivating as hell right? I could make this my job!!!

In reality it turned out the be the carrot on a stick dangling in front of my face that I will never reach. Hope is cruel.

Next year is the date I wanted to have finished AHS and moved on to the next project, instead I’m not even 1/8th of the way there. And given my ever deteriorating health, I will never get there.

So, I won’t be able to finish AHS and I’ll take all the other ideas I had to my grave? What’s even the point in going on?

Someone suggested writing instead of doing a comic. No fuck that. I’m a visual person and I can’t write to save my life. There’s webcomics I stopped following because they switched to mostly text. It’d be kinda hypocritical for me to do the same. Something like a visual novel mayyybe, but I’d rather make something like a turn based rpg, but who knows how long something like that would take me…

Some suggest working with another artist. I did actually try that once, but it ended in tears. I’m not cut out for working with people honestly. The subject matter of my stuff is another thing, people might work with me now, but they don’t know what the story has in store… And then there’s a matter of payment, If i worked with someone I’d want the art to be on par with mine and of course I’d pay for that. But my financial situation is so dire, I don’t even have money for the last week of each month.

So, if I only have one comic in me (if that), do I really want it to be AHS, a comic I have many regrets about? If so, do I completely remake chapter 1 and some of chapter 2 in order to try and make it work? Or If I’m remaking chapter 1 anyway, change the whole thing to take it in a direction I’m more interested in? Or just make something entirely different? But what’s the point if I don’t finish that either?

Maybe I should make a lewd image patreon for the time being.

I don’t know… these are just the ramblings of someone trying to cling to a life that’s probably over at this point.